Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini

by Rafael Sabatini

  The arrest of the others followed instantly, and, sentenced to death, they were publicly burned in the Square of Sant’ Eligio, after suffering all the brutal, unspeakable horrors of fourteenth-century torture, which continued to the very scaffold, with the alleged intention of inducing them to denounce any further accomplices. But though they writhed and fainted under the pincers of the executioners, they confessed nothing. Indeed, they preserved a silence which left the people amazed, for the people lacked the explanation. The Grand Justiciary, Hugh des Baux, had seen to it that the Pope’s injunctions should be obeyed. Lest the condemned should say too much, he had taken the precaution of having their tongues fastened down with fish-hooks.

  Thus Charles was momentarily baulked, and he was further baulked by the fact that Giovanna had taken a second husband, in her cousin, Louis of Taranto. Unless matters were to remain there and the game end in a stalemate, bold measures were required, and those measures Charles adopted. He wrote to the King of Hungary now openly accusing Giovanna of the murder, and pointing out the circumstances that in themselves afforded corroboration of his charge.

  Those circumstances Ludwig embodied in a fulminating letter which he wrote to Giovanna in answer to her defence against the charge of inaction in the matter of her late husband’s murderers: “Giovanna, thy antecedent disorderly life, thy retention of the exclusive power in the kingdom, thy neglect of vengeance upon the murderers of thy husband, thy having taken another husband, and thy very excuses abundantly prove thy complicity in thy husband’s death.”

  So far this was all as Charles of Durazzo could have desired it. But there was more. Ludwig was advancing now in arms to take possession of the kingdom, of which, under all the circumstances, he might consider himself the lawful heir, and the Princes of Italy were affording him unhindered passage through their States. This was not at all to Charles’s liking. Indeed, unless he bestirred himself, it might prove to be checkmate from an altogether unexpected quarter, rendering vain all the masterly play with which he had conducted the game so far.

  It flustered him a little, and in his haste to counter it he blundered.

  Giovanna, alarmed at the rapid advance of Ludwig, summoned her barons to her aid, and in that summons she included Charles, realizing that at all costs he must be brought over to her side. He went, listened, and finally sold himself for a good price the title of Duke of Calabria, which made him heir to the kingdom. He raised a powerful troop of lances, and marched upon Aquila, which had already hoisted the Hungarian banner.

  There it was that he discovered, and soon, his move to have been a bad one. News was brought to him that the Queen, taken with panic, had fled to Provence, seeking sanctuary at Avignon.

  Charles set about correcting his error without delay, and marched out of Aquila to go and meet Ludwig that he might protest his loyalty, and range himself under the invader’s banner.

  At Foligno, the King of Hungary was met by a papal legate, who in the name of Pope Clement forbade him under pain of excommunication to invade a fief of Holy Church.

  “When I am master of Naples,” answered Ludwig firmly, “I shall count myself a feudatory of the Holy See. Until then I render account to none but God and my conscience.” And he pushed on, preceded by a black banner of death, scattering in true Hungarian fashion murder, rape, pillage, and arson through the smiling countryside, exacting upon the whole land a terrible vengeance for the murder of his brother.

  Thus he came to Aversa, and there quartered himself and his Hungarians upon that convent of Saint Peter where Andreas had been strangled a year ago. And it was here that he was joined by Charles, who came protesting loyalty, and whom the King received with open arms and a glad welcome, as was to be expected from a man who had been Andreas’s one true friend in that land of enemies. Of Charles’s indiscreet escapade in the matter of Aquila nothing was said. As Charles had fully expected, it was condoned upon the score both of the past and the present.

  That night there was high feasting in that same refectory where Andreas had feasted on the night when the stranglers watched him, waiting, and Charles was the guest of honour. In the morning Ludwig was to pursue his march upon the city of Naples, and all were astir betimes.

  On the point of setting out, Ludwig turned to Charles.

  “Before I go,” he said, “I have a mind to visit the spot where my brother died.”

  To Charles, no doubt, this seemed a morbid notion to be discouraged. But Ludwig was insistent.

  “Take me there,” he bade the Duke.

  “Indeed, I scarce know — I was not here, remember,” Charles answered him, rendered faintly uneasy, perhaps by a certain grimness in the gaunt King’s face, perhaps by the mutterings of his own conscience.

  “I know that you were not; but surely you must know the place. It will be known to all the world in these parts. Besides, was it not yourself recovered the body? Conduct me thither, then.”

  Perforce, then, Charles must do his will. Arm-in-arm they mounted the stairs to that sinister loggia, a half-dozen of Ludwig’s escorting officers following.

  They stepped along the tessellated floor above the Abbot’s garden, flooded now with sunshine which drew the perfume from the roses blooming there.

  “Here the King slept,” said Charles, “and yonder the Queen. Somewhere here between the thing was done, and thence they hanged him.”

  Ludwig, tall and grim, stood considering, chin in hand. Suddenly he wheeled upon the Duke who stood at his elbow. His face had undergone a change, and his lip curled so that he displayed his strong teeth as a dog displays them when he snarls.

  “Traitor!” he rasped. “It is you — you who come smiling and fawning upon me, and spurring me on to vengeance — who are to blame for what happened here.”

  “I?” Charles fell back, changing colour, his legs trembling under him.

  “You!” the King answered him furiously. “His death would never have come about but for your intrigues to keep him out of the royal power, to hinder his coronation.”

  “It is false!” cried Charles. “False! I swear it before God!”

  “Perjured dog! Do you deny that you sought the aid of your precious uncle the Cardinal of Perigord to restrain the Pope from granting the Bull required?”

  “I do deny it. The facts deny it. The Bull was forthcoming.”

  “Then your denial but proves your guilt,” the King answered him, and from the leather pouch hanging from his belt, he pulled out a parchment, and held it under the Duke’s staring eyes. It was the letter he had written to the Cardinal of Perigord, enjoining him to prevent the Pope from signing the Bull sanctioning Andreas’s coronation.

  The King smiled terribly into that white, twitching face.

  “Deny it now,” he mocked him. “Deny, too, that, bribed by the title of Duke of Calabria, you turned to the service of the Queen, to abandon it again for ours when you perceived your danger. You think to use us, traitor, as a stepping-stone to help you to mount the throne — as you sought to use my brother even to the extent of encompassing his murder.”

  “No, no! I had no hand in that. I was his friend—”

  “Liar!” Ludwig struck him across the mouth.

  On the instant the officers of Ludwig laid hands upon the Duke, fearing that the indignity might spur him to retaliation.

  “You are very opportune,” said Ludwig; and added coldly, “Dispatch him.”

  Charles screamed a moment, even as Andreas had screamed on that same spot, when he found himself staring into the fearful face of death. Then the scream became a cough as a Hungarian sword went through him from side to side.

  They picked up his body from the tessellated floor of the loggia, carried it to the parapet as Andreas’s had been carried, and flung it down into the Abbot’s garden as Andreas’s had been flung. It lay in a rosebush, dyeing the Abbot’s roses a deeper red.

  Never was justice more poetic.

  XI. THE NIGHT OF HATE — The Murder Of The Duke Of Gandia


  The Cardinal Vice-Chancellor took the packet proffered him by the fair-haired, scarlet-liveried page, and turned it over, considering it, the gentle, finely featured, almost ascetic face very thoughtful.

  “It was brought, my lord, by a man in a mask, who will give no name. He waits below,” said the scarlet stripling.

  “A man in a mask, eh? What mystery!”

  The thoughtful brown eyes smiled, the fine hands broke the fragment of wax. A gold ring fell out and rolled some little way along the black and purple Eastern rug. The boy dived after it, and presented it to his lordship.

  The ring bore an escutcheon, and the Cardinal found graven upon this escutcheon his own arms the Sforza lion and the flower of the quince. Instantly those dark, thoughtful eyes of his grew keen as they flashed upon the page.

  “Did you see the device?” he asked, a hint of steel under the silkiness of his voice.

  “I saw nothing, my lord — a ring, no more. I did not even look.”

  The Cardinal continued to ponder him for a long moment very searchingly.

  “Go — bring this man,” he said at last; and the boy departed, soon to reappear; holding aside the tapestry that masked the door to give passage to a man of middle height wrapped in a black cloak, his face under a shower of golden hair, covered from chin to brow by a black visor.

  At a sign from the Cardinal the page departed. Then the man, coming forward, let fall his cloak, revealing a rich dress of close-fitting violet silk, sword and dagger hanging from his jewelled girdle; he plucked away the mask, and disclosed the handsome, weak face of Giovanni Sforza, Lord of Pesaro and Cotignola, the discarded husband of Madonna Lucrezia, Pope Alexander’s daughter.

  The Cardinal considered his nephew gravely, without surprise. He had expected at first no more than a messenger from the owner of that ring. But at sight of his figure and long, fair hair he had recognized Giovanni before the latter had removed his mask.

  “I have always accounted you something mad,” said the Cardinal softly. “But never mad enough for this. What brings you to Rome?”

  “Necessity, my lord,” replied the young tyrant. “The need to defend my honour, which is about to be destroyed.”

  “And your life?” wondered his uncle. “Has that ceased to be of value?”

  “Without honour it is nothing.”

  “A noble sentiment taught in every school. But for practical purposes—” The Cardinal shrugged.

  Giovanni, however, paid no heed.

  “Did you think, my lord, that I should tamely submit to be a derided, outcast husband, that I should take no vengeance upon, that villainous Pope for having made me a thing of scorn, a byword throughout Italy?” Livid hate writhed in his fair young face. “Did you think I should, indeed, remain in Pesaro, whither I fled before their threats to my life, and present no reckoning?”

  “What is the reckoning you have in mind?” inquired his uncle, faintly ironical. “You’ll not be intending to kill the Holy Father?”

  “Kill him?” Giovanni laughed shortly, scornfully. “Do the dead suffer?”

  “In hell, sometimes,” said the Cardinal.

  “Perhaps. But I want to be sure. I want sufferings that I can witness, sufferings that I can employ as balsam for my own wounded honour. I shall strike, even as he has stricken me — at his soul, not at his body. I shall wound him where he is most sensitive.”

  Ascanio Sforza, towering tall and slender in his scarlet robes, shook his head slowly.

  “All this is madness — madness! You were best away, best in Pesaro. Indeed, you cannot safely show your face in Rome.”

  “That is why I go masked. That is why I come to you, my lord, for shelter here until—”

  “Here?” The Cardinal was instantly alert. “Then you think I am as mad as yourself. Why, man, if so much as a whisper of your presence in Rome got abroad, this is the first place where they would look for you. If you will have your way, if you are so set on the avenging of past wrongs and the preventing of future ones, it is not for me, your kinsman, to withstand you. But here in my palace you cannot stay, for your own safety’s sake. That page who brought you, now; I would not swear he did not see the arms upon your ring. I pray that he did not. But if he did, your presence is known here already.”

  Giovanni was perturbed.

  “But if not here, where, then, in Rome should I be safe?”

  “Nowhere, I think,” answered the ironical Ascanio. “Though perhaps you might count yourself safe with Pico. Your common hate of the Holy Father should be a stout bond between you.”

  Fate prompted the suggestion. Fate drove the Lord of Pesaro to act upon it, and to seek out Antonio Maria Pico, Count of Mirandola, in his palace by the river, where Pico, as Ascanio had foreseen, gave him a cordial welcome.

  There he abode almost in hiding until the end of May, seldom issuing forth, and never without his mask — a matter this which excited no comment, for masked faces were common in the streets of Rome in the evening of the fifteenth century. In talk with Pico he set forth his intent, elaborating what already he had told the Cardinal Vice-Chancellor.

  “He is a father — this Father of Fathers,” he said once. “A tender, loving father whose life is in his children, who lives through them and for them. Deprive him of them, and his life would become empty, worthless, a living death. There is Giovanni, who is as the apple of his eye, whom he has created Duke of Gandia, Duke of Benevento, Prince of Sessa, Lord of Teano, and more besides. There is the Cardinal of Valencia, there is Giuffredo, Prince of Squillace, and there is my wife, Lucrezia, of whom he has robbed me. There is, you see, an ample heel to our Achilles. The question is, where shall we begin?”

  “And also, how,” Pico reminded him.

  Fate was to answer both those questions, and that soon.

  They went on June 1st — the Lord of Pesaro, with his host and his host’s daughter, Antonia — to spend the day at Pico’s vineyard in Trastevere. At the moment of setting out to return to Rome in the evening the Count was detained by his steward, newly returned from a journey with matters to communicate to him.

  He bade his guest, with his daughter and their attendants, to ride on, saying that he himself would follow and overtake them. But the steward detained him longer than he had expected, so that, although the company proceeded leisurely towards the city, Pico had not come up with them when they reached the river. In the narrow street beyond the bridge the little escort found itself suddenly confronted and thrust aside by a magnificent cavalcade of ladies and gallants, hawk on wrist and followed by a pack of hounds.

  Giovanni had eyes for one only in that gay company — a tall, splendidly handsome man in green, a Plumed bonnet on his auburn head, and a roguish, jovial eye, which, in its turn, saw nobody in that moment but Madonna Antonia, reclining in her litter, the leather curtains of which she had drawn back that she might converse with Giovanni as they rode.

  The Lord of Pesaro beheld the sudden kindling of his brother-in-law’s glance, for that handsome gallant was the Duke of Gandia, the Pope’s eldest son, the very apple of the Holy Father’s eye. He saw the Duke’s almost unconscious check upon his reins; saw him turn in the saddle to stare boldly at Madonna Antonia until, grown conscious of his regard, she crimsoned under it. And when at last the litter had moved on, he saw over his shoulder a mounted servant detach from the Duke’s side to follow them. This fellow dogged their heels all the way to the Parione Quarter, obviously with intent to discover for his master where the beautiful lady of the litter might be housed.

  Giovanni said naught of this to Pico when he returned a little later. He was quick to perceive the opportunity that offered, but far from sure that Pico would suffer his daughter to be used as a decoy; far, indeed, from sure that he dared himself so employ her. But on the morrow, chancing to look from a window out of idle curiosity to see what horse it was that was pacing in the street below, he beheld a man in a rich cloak, in whom at once he recognized the Duke, and he accounted that the dice of destiny
had fallen.

  Himself unseen by that horseman, Giovanni drew back quickly. On the spur of the moment, he acted with a subtlety worthy of long premeditation. Antonia and he were by an odd fatality alone together in that chamber of the mezzanine. He turned to her.

  “An odd fellow rides below here, tarrying as if expectant. I wonder should you know who he is.”

  Obeying his suggestion, she rose — a tall, slim child of some eighteen years, of a delicate, pale beauty, with dark, thoughtful eyes and long, black tresses, interwoven with jewelled strands of gold thread. She rustled to the window and looked down upon that cavalier; and, as she looked, scanning him intently, the Duke raised his head. Their eyes met, and she drew back with a little cry.

  “What is it?” exclaimed Giovanni.

  “It is that insolent fellow who stared at me last evening in the street. I would you had not bidden me look.”

  Now, whilst she had been gazing from the window, Giovanni, moving softly behind her, had espied a bowl of roses on the ebony table in the room’s middle. Swiftly and silently he had plucked a blossom, which he now held behind his back. As she turned from him again, he sent it flying through the window; and whilst in his heart he laughed with bitter hate and scorn as he thought of Gandia snatching up that rose and treasuring it in his bosom, aloud he laughed at her fears, derided them as idle.

  That night, in his room, Giovanni practised penmanship assiduously, armed with a model with which Antonia had innocently equipped him. He went to bed well pleased, reflecting that as a man lives so does he die. Giovanni Borgia, Duke of Gandia, had been ever an amiable profligate, a heedless voluptuary obeying no spur but that of his own pleasure, which should drive him now to his destruction. Giovanni Borgia, he considered further, was, as he had expressed it, the very apple of his father’s eye; and since, of his own accord, the Duke had come to thrust his foolish head into the noose, the Lord of Pesaro would make a sweet beginning to the avenging of his wrongs by drawing it taut.